by Glenn, Roy
We had a nice quiet evening. Angelique had cooked dinner and waited to eat with me. After dinner we talked about the Bandexx deal and watched a little television, before heading for the bedroom. Angelique took a shower and then I took mine. When I got out of the shower and got in the bed, I kissed her goodnight and was surprised when Angelique took it a step further.
I love kissing her. Like I said, Angelique is a phenomenal kisser. There was so much passion in her kiss. More than I had ever experienced before or since. If only the rest of our sex was as intense as that, I would be in heaven.
Angelique turned off the TV, which is always the first step before we do it. She has to have complete darkness in the room when we have sex, so doin’ it at any time during the day is out of the question. Angelique sat up in the bed and took off her nightgown, and we begin to make love. She opened her legs and I crawled in between them and eased myself inside her slowly.
Angelique and I kiss the entire time that I’m inside her. Our tongues glide effortlessly in and out of each other’s mouths. Despite it being quick and unadventurous, Angelique has the best pussy. It is always dipping wet and it feels like it was contoured perfectly for my dick. That fact alone makes making love to my beautiful wife so good, each time we do it. If only it could last longer.
I’ve tried to condition my mind to focus on the fact that it feels so good and be satisfied with that, but it only makes me want more. While we make love, I try not to watch the clock, but I always seem to. Ten minutes is normal and anything that approaches fifteen is great. That night, our lovemaking lasted all of twelve minutes before Angelique pushed me off of her and rolled over. I held her tightly, with my dick rock hard, and pressed up against her luscious ass. Ten minutes later, Angelique was fast asleep, but once again I was wide-awake and thoroughly unsatisfied.
Chapter Eight
Chris
I walked out of Technical Management Group bringing closure to a day I would never forget, but I would damn sure try to. It began first thing that morning when I woke up, late. It was eight thirty and the morning meeting began at nine. While getting dressed, I banged my knee against the bed. “That shit hurt like a muthafucka.” But thirteen minutes later I was in the car and away. Traffic was heavier than usual that late in rush hour. Partly because I-20 was thick with the Georgia State Patrol and the rubberneckers were out in force, slowing down to look every time they saw blue lights flashing. Since exploiting the HOV lane was out of the question, I arrived in time to catch everyone coming out of the meeting.
The job had been one disaster after another almost since the first day I signed the contract. I remember how optimistic I was when I first got the contract. I was riding with Tavarus the Sunday afternoon before the job started. “So what’s up with this new gig you got, Chris?”
“The name of the company is TMG, Technical Management Group; Angelique turned me on to them. It’s a data center facility used to house computer systems and associated components like telecommunications and storage systems,” I said to him and explained what they do.
“You know about that?”
“Enough to be dangerous. I can run some diagnostic tests, but CJ works with the system every day at her job. So, I figured I could go out there, run some tests, and call her. If things got too thick, CJ could come out there. Now, when I get there, everybody’s in panic mode—running around like chickens with their heads cut off. So, after they give me the sob story about the consultant, I sit down at the console and reboot. The system comes right back up.”
“Just like that.”
“Yeah, but they don’t know anything about the system, so they didn’t know it was backed up. So I ran the diagnostics and called CJ just to be sure everything was cool. She said to take the system down, then bring it back up. Easiest thousand I ever made.”
“So how’d you turn it into a job?”
“A week later, a guy named Ivan DeVito, leaves me a message, ‘Let’s talk. Come by any time, I’m always here.’ So I call Angelique to get the scoop. Seems their consultant was in Jamaica for the week. Didn’t tell them he was going. He didn’t have an emergency contact person, much less a backup. He was hardly ever there; had them doing all the reporting themselves, and basically getting cold paid for nothing. When he showed up that Monday, they wouldn’t even let him in the building. They’re suing him for breach of contract. Here’s the best part, Tee: they were paying him a hundred and twenty grand.”
“No shit.”
“I go to work on a proposal right away. I figure for that kind of money, I could bring in two people and give them onsite coverage from eight am until midnight. I’d pay CJ to do two weeks of training. Then put her on a retainer to be on-call, and still make thirty grand profit. It’s the biggest contract I’ve ever had. DeVito kept me waiting for an hour, then we talked for three more hours, but when I left, I had a deal.”
“Now that’s a motivated Black man at work. You saw an opportunity, fell up in there with a plan, and capitalized on it. You know I admire you for that. I think about goin’ solo, starting my own business, but not knowing where your money’s gonna come from is scary. It takes heart to step out there alone the way you did. I respect you for that.”
“The security of that regular pay check is keeping you in check. Tavarus, you got a marketable skill and a very lucrative one at that, but you allow somebody else to get paid for it. Only thing that keeps you showing up every Monday is fear. Always be willing to face your fears, Tee.”
Tavarus thought about it. He knew I was right. Me and Tee have been having this conversation since I went out on my own. It always ends the same way. “You’re right, Chris. I know it. As a matter of fact, I was talking to Linda about taking that step.”
“It wasn’t easy, you know that.” I thought back to those days. “You and Zack used to feed me damn near every day.”
“I remember those days. We used to call you a bum and yell, ‘GET A JOB! GET A JOB!’”
“Thought about getting a job many, many, many times. Almost lost my house. But I stuck. I know I just got lucky with this one. Angelique looked out. But when I walked in there, I was ready.”
“That’s ’cause you the man.”
On this particular day, twenty minutes later, their main server went down. Which didn’t really present a problem for me since the server my system is housed on, was still up and running. I’ve offered to help them out when they’ve had problems, but it was never excepted. However, just to show what a team player I was, I stopped by to offer my assistance. “That’s okay, Chris. We got it.”
“Call me before you reconnect to the system,” I said, as I gladly left the area. Cisco’s Unified Computing System Manager or UCS, provides unified, embedded management of all software and hardware components. It controls multiple chassis for all of their virtual machines.
I went into my office across the hall and asked Kim, one of the woman I hired to run some diagnostics, just to be sure everything was fine.
And it was.
So I went for my second cup of coffee and relaxed with the paper. A half-hour later we received a call from James, the director of information systems. “Hey, Chris! What’s going on over there?” James asked in a panic.
“Everything’s fine here. Y’all back up?”
“Hell yeah! We’ve been up for damn near twenty minutes. But the system is still off-line.”
“I thought you were gonna call me before you tried to reconnect to the system. Hold on.” I jumped out of my chair. “Kim, are we still up?”
Kim rolled her chair around to the console. “Yeah, why?”
“James said the system is still off-line and they been up for twenty minutes,” I said, practically pulling Kim out of her chair and out of my way. I picked up the extension. “James! Everything looks good here. I don’t know why it’s still down. I’ll call you back.”
“I’ll be over there.” James slammed down the phone.
“This is the last thing I need today,” I s
aid, feverishly typing commands. “He needs to stay his ass over there. I don’t need him standing over my shoulder, breathing down my neck.”
I tried everything I knew to get the system back online to no avail. Everything still read fine. When rebooting, the system failed. I called CJ, left her a message, and continued to work. After waiting fifteen minutes for CJ to call back, I called for her at her job. “Jackie, this is Chris. How you doing? Is CJ there?”
“She’s here, but she’s not at her desk.”
“I called her, but she hasn’t called back.”
“That might have something to do with the fact that her cell phone is on her desk.”
“Great, just fuckin’ great! I’m sorry, Jackie, I didn’t mean to curse at you. When CJ comes back, have her call me, please. Tell her it’s important.”
CJ finally called back an hour later. By that time, not only was James breathing down my neck, but by then Ivan had showed up, making a pest of himself. CJ rattled off commands for me to try. None of which worked. “I need to get into the system, Chris. I’ll be over there.”
I was glad to have CJ on board. If I could ever stabilize this account, I could pursue some new business and I’d be on my way. But as happy as I was about it, I was still a little leery about working with a married woman that I am in love with.
An hour and a half later, I was in the parking lot pacing back and forth, when CJ zoomed into the parking lot and ran toward the building. “Sorry I’m late, Chris. Traffic was murder coming through downtown.”
“As long as you’re here,” I said as we entered the building. When we got to the door of the office, I noticed a bruise on CJ’s left cheek. “What happened to you?”
“I walked into a door the other night,” she answered quickly and went inside.
“Did the door have a name?”
CJ didn’t answer.
A half-hour after that, she was able to get the system back online, but it was two o’clock by then. She could offer no explanation why the system appeared to be online when it wasn’t. I spent the rest of the day trying to explain it to Ivan and generating reports; printing logs and going over them carefully, looking for the cause. Once we were done, CJ and I headed out the building. As we approached the lobby, Ivan DeVito called me into his office. “It will only take a minute,” Ivan promised.
I looked over at CJ. “Don’t leave.”
“I won’t. Remember, meals are included in my deal and I’m hungry.”
Once we were in his office, Ivan told me how pleased he and the other managers were with the way CJ handled the situation. “I just wanted to let you know that I really have a good feeling about the way things are going.”
“Thank you.”
“I made some notes and I’d like to go over them with you. That is, if you have time.”
I looked at my watch.
“It should only take a few minutes,” Ivan promised.
It was nearly an hour before Ivan stopped talking and let me out of his office. I walked out to the parking lot to find CJ waiting patiently in her car. She looked at her watch. “What happened to this ‘will only take a minute’?” she asked.
“Old Ivan had other ideas. He made some notes.”
“What, he didn’t like the way I resolved the problem?”
“No, as a matter of fact, he loved you. Said you were absolutely extraordinary.”
“That sounds more like something you would say.”
“You’re right, I did think you were absolutely extraordinary today. He did say you were fantastic. It was just questions he had, procedures he wants to put in place.”
I looked at CJ. Even with the black eye, she still looked good to me. “What’s up with that?” I asked and pointed to her eye.
“I told already told you what happened, Chris. I walked into a door.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can talk about all that later. I’m hungry. Come on ride with me.”
“That’s okay, I’ll drive my own car. I hate being a passenger.”
“No, you just hate being taken for a ride,” I said as I walked to my car.
CJ started her car. “You just don’t know how much!”
CJ followed me to Huey’s on Peachtree. Along the way I painted several elaborate scenarios about how she got the black eye. Each ended with the same conclusion. There was no doubt in my mind that her husband, Manny, hit her. I only needed to hear why.
Once we got inside, CJ proceeded to talk about everything but what happened. We talked about the day and the agenda for the morning. Then she forced me to go back to the car to get the notes I took during my meeting with Ivan. CJ continued to focus on how important this was to us.
“We can’t mess this up,” CJ said.
I sat back in my chair and rubbed my beard. “I’ve been noticing something about you today, CJ.”
“Something other than my eye I hope.”
“Nah. Your eye ain’t that bad. I just wanna know what happened. But that’s not what I been noticing. All day you have been talking up this we thing. You tryin’ to tell me something?”
“Yes, but you want to know what happened, don’t you?”
“The thought had occurred to me.”
“Me and Manny got into it on the way home the other night.” CJ let out a little laugh. “The parking lot really.”
“What’d y’all get into it about?”
“He’s been drinking a lot lately. Anyway. He was drunk, again. Too drunk to drive and that’s what started it. I didn’t want him to drive home. Some guy walked up while we were arguing. It was getting pretty ugly by then. I don’t know who he was, but he finally convinced Manny to let me drive. He passed out in the car on the way home. But when we got home, we got right back into it. Chris, now you know I don’t like to argue.”
“I know. You keep it all to yourself.”
“Not that night. Chris, I went off.”
“You, CJ, went off? Say it ain’t so.”
“Every complaint I ever had with him, I threw it at him.”
“Get outta here.”
“I told him I was tired of him drinking so much and him embarrassing me in public was getting real old. I told him I was tired of carrying all the weight financially. That he needs to get off his ass and start making some money. I’m losing respect for him, Chris. And that’s not good.”
“I thought he got a new job and a big raise?”
“Big raise, my big ass. You know they aren’t paying any money out there, Chris. That’s why we left. You know that. Even with the raise, I still make twice what he’s making. He makes enough to pay for that Acura he didn’t need and his high-ass insurance. He can handle a bill every now and then. He’s always crying broke, but he always got money to buy a bottle or hang out with drunk-ass friends. But when I bring up his drinking or that car, he gets annoyed.”
“I’m sorry, CJ. I knew he was an oilman, but I didn’t know it had gotten that bad.”
“I keep stuff to myself, remember.” CJ took a sip of her drink and dropped her head.
“Why do you stay with him?”
“I still kind of love him. And when he’s not drunk, he’s nice and he promises to do better. He’ll stop drinking for a day or two. Maybe even a week. Most of the time I think it’s ’cause he’s broke. One time last year, he stopped drinking for a month. I was shocked. Started looking in the paper on Sunday and whatnot. But he never would see anything he felt like going for. It had to be the right opportunity, he’d say, and it’s not to be taken lightly.”
“So what happened to your eye?”
“Oh yeah, well, after a while I stopped fussing and went to bed, he gets in bed and starts rubbing on me. I say stop, ’cause I really don’t feel like being bothered with his drunk ass. But he keeps on, trying to force himself on me. So I get out of bed; I was going to sleep in the other room.”
“That’s when he hit you.”
“He didn’t hit me,” she said, but I could tell by the look in hers eyes that she w
as lying. “He gets out of bed and starts following me, but he’s so drunk that he tripped and he pulled me into the door.”
“That’s what happened?” I looked at her in a way that showed my disbelief. “You ran into a door? That’s it?”
“That my story and I’m sticking to it.”
The waitress brought us our food and we ate in silence for a few minutes. I thought about pushing the issue, but I knew CJ wasn’t going to back off her story. I never knew what CJ saw in Manny. She could do much better than that.
Me for instance.
I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs that she should leave him. I never really liked Manny, even before he and CJ started dating. It wasn’t my fault that Manny was loud, country, and drank too much. Or that he was lazy and was probably beating her. That wouldn’t be interfering, I thought. I would just be pointing out what she should already know. But I promised myself that I would never be the cause of their marriage breaking up.
CJ, on the other hand, was perfectly content to let it die right there. I figured she’d appreciate me not pushing it, so I let it go. The truth was that I knew that Manny hit her and it wasn’t the first time. CJ still felt something for Manny and she wanted to help him to get through this. She thought she should be there for him. Be supportive of him, not run out on him because he was going through a bad time. But Manny isn’t even trying to do better. Be supportive, not support him, and that’s what was happening.
“Hey, you.” CJ looked at me and smiled. “Thanks for not pushing it.”
“Yeah, right,” I spit out, but quickly changed my attitude. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready and I’ll be here to listen. That’s what friends are for, right?”
“Right.” CJ smiled. “But there is something I do wanna talk to you about.”
“What’s that?”
“You were gonna to pay me five thousand dollars for training, and another five to be retainer for a year.”
“That’s what you agreed on.”
